This collection contains the papers relating to the lives and activities of various members of the Blair, Croghan, Janin, and Jesup families, chiefly extending from New Orleans lawyer and businessman Albert Covington Janin and his wife, Washington, D.C., socialite Violet (Blair) Janin, with the bulk of the collection dating between 1850-1930. Subject matter in the collection includes: politics and government and society and customs in Washington, D.C., and Louisiana; Blair House (Washington, D.C.); land titles in Indiana Territory, Kentucky, Louisiana, and Missouri; the Ocean Canal and Transportation Company; and the history of Mammoth Cave, Kentucky, from 1839 until 1932.

Louis Janin (1803-1874), a lawyer, was born and educated in Vienna and in 1828 emigrated to New Orleans, where he practiced law and invested in sugar plantations. Of his six sons, three (Louis, Henry and Alexis) became mining engineers, and one, Albert Covington Janin, became a lawyer. Albert Covington Janin practiced law in New Orleans (and later in New York and Washington), entered politics, operated a canal in Louisiana, later managed the Mammoth Cave Estate in Kentucky and married Violet Blair (1850-1932), daughter of James Lawrence Blair (1819-1853) and Mary Jesup Blair (1825-1914). James Lawrence Blair (1819-1853), a U.S. naval officer, acquired property in San Francisco in 1849 and established the first steamship line on the Sacramento River. James Blair's wife, Mary, was the daughter of Thomas Sidney Jesup (1788-1860), U.S. Army officer. Jesup's wife, Anne Heron Croghan, was a member of a Kentucky family and a niece of George Rogers Clark. Her brother, John Croghan, purchased lands containing the Mammoth Cave, which he willed to the descendents of his sister and brothers. Violet Blair Janin (1850-1932), a Washington, D.C., society leader, lived her entire life in Lafayette Square near the White House except for brief periods following her marriage in 1874 to Albert Covington Janin when she lived in New Orleans. She traveled in Europe and elsewhere, and was active in the National Society of Colonial Dames, the National Society of the American Revolution, the National Society Opposed to Woman's Suffrage, and others. Her sister, Lucy James Blair Wheeler, (1853-1902), married Major George Montague Wheeler (1842-1905), engineer and West Point graduate, and she accompanied her husband to military posts in the U.S. (including Denver, Colorado) and Europe.

29.6 Linear Feet (71 boxes)

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